6,238 light years from Earth

Bal’Ri’Kan Flagship

Three months after rescue

The chief cleric surveyed the massive debris field of the battlespace as the wreckage of Bal’Ri’Kan crusader ships and impure insect vessels continued to drift in an expanding cloud.

He hooted softly to the underling, and the projector screen changed to multiple points of view as the underling accessed the other recorders so the chief cleric could see all around the flagship.

The chief cleric made a guttural click, and the underling cowered as he brought back the last six viewing angles. Looking at the new viewpoints, the chief cleric raged, hissing at what he saw.

The sight of the broken crusader ships filled him with an uncontrollable anger, and he would pray for the Masters to take the souls of the holy martyrs to the paradise that was promised to them.

The disgusting insects made them fight for every light cycle of space, for every solar system, for every grain of interstellar dust as the crusader fleets took back what the Masters had gifted them.

They finally found the impure creatures after hunting their scent for generations, and the chief cleric was greatly surprised by the change the filthy insects underwent after their long, cowardly flight.

This time, the insects had weapons and warships, and they fought with a skill and tenacity that the chief cleric was forced to grudgingly acknowledge. The crusader fleet losses were evidence of that.

His ancestor failed to complete the holy cleansing of the insects over four hundred cycles ago, and the clan suffered a great loss of status as a result.

They were subjected to scorn and ridicule because of the failure, and his clan became outcasts.

It had taken many generations to reclaim their status and wash away the stain of dishonor that marked the clan because of their ancestor’s failure, and the clan suffered greatly for many cycles.

The chief cleric, angered by the stigma of being descended from the ancestor, was the first one to reclaim the clan’s honor. He tired of the insults and abuse inflicted upon him by the other clans.

After completing the ritual coming-of-age hunt, he was considered a warrior and capable of challenging other warriors in trials of combat.

After honing his combat skills, he started challenging others to trials of combat. He was done being an outcast.

The first one was his clan leader, a weak coward that did nothing to reclaim the clan’s status. The clan leader cowered under the abuse inflicted on him by others and dared not defend the clan’s honor.

The clan leader would take out his anger on his harem of mates, sex slaves, and on his pathetic outcast underlings. The chief cleric was one of those who suffered under the abuse of the coward.

He challenged the clan leader and killed him with barely any effort. Now he was clan leader, and he took over the harem and killed all the hatchlings to make the females receptive to mating with him.

Afterwards, he killed the most cowardly members of the clan to remove their defective genetics from the clan gene pool and trained the surviving males in combat skills to turn them into warriors.

The chief cleric then started challenging clan chiefs of other outcast clans and quickly rose in status as he absorbed their clans into his, the dead chiefs’ harems and warriors belonging to him now.

Soon, he had thousands of hatchlings and tens of thousands of warriors that belonged to him, and he did not abuse them like their now-dead clan chiefs did. He treated them well and earned their loyalty.

He trained the warriors well and made sure that the status increases he earned were conferred on his own clan members. He personally killed any members of other clans that insulted his own.

After two years, he was the third most powerful clan leader, and his well-trained warriors were now renowned for their fighting prowess. The chief cleric would ask for his clan's services many times.

When the crusade met with unexpectedly fierce resistance from impure creatures, the chief cleric would call for him to bring his clan warriors to end it. His status grew, and his clan grew with him.

On one such world, he discovered a secret poison that would leave no trace by torturing a healer on one of the worlds they conquered after realizing their poison darts were killing many of his warriors.

He made the healer manufacture large quantities of the poison with promises of sparing the disgusting creature. For many days he watched the healer gather the leaves and make it as he promised it life.

He made sure the poison worked by using it on the healer after it had finished, relishing the look of surprised betrayal in the healer’s eyes when it realized he had poisoned the water it just drank.

Now that he had his secret poison, he could challenge the second-ranked clan leader and ensure his victory. He did not have the necessary combat abilities to best him, and the undetectable poison would do what he could not.

He challenged the clan leader and made the fight a long, drawn-out affair as he inflicted several superficial cuts with the poisoned blade. It was a difficult battle, and he had never fought so hard in his life before.

After many dangerous minutes, the clan leader finally collapsed, and he went in for the killing blow, stabbing him through one of his eyes before opening his throat and exsanguinating him.

The suspicious manner of the collapse and the death seizures of the clan leader warranted an investigation by a healer, and he waited nervously as the healer methodically examined the corpse with his devices.

The healer declared him the victor, claiming the clan leader showed signs of suffering from a heart attack due to the stress of the combat. He was now the second most powerful clan leader, and he wanted to be first.

Biding his time, he continued to lead his warriors on several cleansing crusades as he waited for an opportunity to poison the chief cleric. It took many solar months, but he finally found a way to do it.

He suborned one of the chief cleric’s cooks by seducing her. He made promises of making her his consort, and she foolishly believed that a lowly outcast like her could become the consort of the chief cleric.

He gave her the poison, instructing her on how to give the tiniest of doses to slowly weaken the chief cleric over many days. While that was happening, he purposefully angered the chief cleric with many small slights.

Actions such as blatantly defying orders and claiming the spoils of conquest that belonged to the chief cleric were committed by him to force the chief cleric to challenge him for disobedience.

Finally, after many days of disrespect, the chief cleric challenged him after he dishonored him by publicly raping one of his harem mates in front of hundreds of Bal’Ri’Kan.

The chief cleric had no choice but to challenge him, and it was over in under a minute. The poison had weakened the cleric considerably, and he dispatched the chief cleric with brutal efficiency.

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After claiming his rightful position and absorbing the spoils of victory, he had the female cook come to his private chambers for her reward. He was unusually merciful and gave her a quick and painless death.

Now he was chief cleric, and he ruled the Bal’Ri’Kan, answerable to none but the Masters.

The chief cleric returned his gaze to the projector screen, thinking of the last system they had to invade. What was left of the filthy insects had retreated there, and he had no choice but to follow.

They had lost almost eighty-five thousand ships in the last three months, and he had already sent messengers back to their space to organize the second wave of waiting crusader fleets.

They would go to the last system and wipe out the less than seven hundred insect vessels remaining. None of the ships they destroyed was the one he had been searching diligently for.

That insect command ship they tried to capture during the first battle of the crusade had not been found yet, and he lowly growled at the memory of those sixteen strange ships that fought with it.

Never during his whole existence had he ever seen ships battle as well as those sixteen ships did, and he still did not understand how it was possible for his scanners to fail to detect any life signs.

What really gave him pause was the anomalous readings detected on the insect command ship. There were insect readings, and there were the other life sign readings that were not insect.

Even more troubling were the null drive signatures of the sixteen ships and the insect command ship. They output null capacitor signals that had not been detected for almost five thousand generations.

He had the wise ones on multiple ships during the battle run their own scans to verify the anomalous readings his ship detected. One by one, they all confirmed the results and his worst fears.

When forced to finally acknowledge the confirmed evidence, he still truly did not want to believe it. The other life signs could only have been made by their most terrible of enemies, the Ma’Kin’Ati.

The null capacitor signals that were detected were also from the same distant past, and that could only mean one thing. The Ma’Kin’Ati and their heretical machine kin, the Ma'Kin'Alit, still existed.

The chief cleric suppressed the fear response he felt as he thought of the implications of the troubling signs.

The plagues released by the ancestors were confirmed to have killed them all before the Ma'Kin'Alit led their foolish ancestors into a trap and almost destroyed the last of the holy crusaders.

Except for the Ma’Kin’Alit, all the disgusting inferiors of that unholy alliance fell to the plagues gifted to the holy Bal’Ri’Kan by the Masters. I must beseech the Masters to intercede on our behalf again.

The chief cleric’s ruminations were interrupted by hundreds of exit flashes on the projector screen. Massive reclamation vessels appeared, dwarfing the crusader battleships as they drifted by.

The reclaimer clans had arrived, outcasts and the lowest of the low in the Bal’Ri’Kan hierarchy. Unworthy of being crusaders, the reclaimers still fulfilled a vital function for the great task.

Thousands of extractors shot out from the reclamation vessels, sending tendril feeders out like a spaceborne beast as the extractors snagged debris and reeled them back into open ports.

Hundreds of small pods streamed out of each vessel and headed for the larger pieces of debris. The outcasts on the pods would cut the debris down to smaller pieces that the extractors could pull in.

Larger ports opened, and out of them came specialized collectors that would magnetize within the debris and pull in any ferromagnetic materials too small for the extractors to collect efficiently.

Once the wreckage of the battle was scavenged for useful material, the reclamation vessels would sort, categorize, and then refine the materials into the common raw ores and alloys used for ships.

The rest of the crusader ships that survived the battle started assembling into formations based on the severity of damage and the complexity of repairs needed to fix ship systems and seal hull breaches.

The refined alloys would be manufactured as requested or sent to the ships in large ingots for the ship crews to utilize as needed. This system allowed the Bal’Ri’Kan to sustain their holy crusade.

Whatever was left after repairs would be returned to the shipyards and foundries to build more crusader ships. The shipyards and foundries were always in need of more ores and alloys.

Seeing that the underlings had the after-battle procedures under control, the chief cleric left the chamber and went to the sacred sanctum in the center of the ship. He needed to pray for guidance.

He removed the raiment and other adornments of his status when he reached the threshold of the sacred sanctum. He felt very exposed as he stepped into the dark interior naked and unarmed.

It took a few moments for his eye pupils to expand to let in the little light available, and he kneeled before bowing reverently to the holy artifact located in the center of the sanctum.

The Gel’Sha’Nac was the most holy of holies. From it, the Bal’Ri’Kan received their religion, their laws, their customs, and their righteous crusade of cleansing the galaxy.

It arrived on their world of origin on the cusp of them achieving spaceflight, and the first clan to find it received the holy directive to spread the truth to all the others and to kill all that did not submit.

After generations of genocide, the holy warriors that worshipped the Gel’Sha’Nac emerged victorious as promised. As a reward, the holy relic gave them the means to spread into space.

No longer were the Bal’Ri’Kan gentle and loving. The sentimental weaknesses that used to afflict them were burned away, and out of the forge emerged the faithful crusaders worthy of paradise.

It taught them how to make ships, weapons, and engines. It gave them the holy mission to cleanse the galaxy. The Bal’Ri’Kan did as commanded, and they spread to the nearby star systems.

The holy relic was the conduit by which the Masters communicated with the Bal’RI’Kan. Only those who were deemed worthy heard the Masters speak to them and gift them with wisdom.

Only the truly blessed heard them, and these chief clerics were venerated by the Bal’Ri’Kan. From the Masters, the Bal’RI’Kan learned that the galaxy had been gifted to them, but they had to earn it.

The only way to do so was to cleanse the galaxy of all other thinking life. Only when the galaxy was made pure would the Masters come and bring the paradise that was promised to the faithful.

For thousands of generations, the Bal’Ri’Kan crusaded, killing all they came across. When faced with an impure foe beyond their means to eradicate, the Masters would gift them more wisdom.

Sometimes the wisdom was new and better weapons or bioengineered plagues the Masters would gift them after providing a genetic sample to the holy relic. Sometimes it was new ways to battle.

The Masters always provided them with the tools and wisdom to continue cleansing the galaxy. The Masters showed them how to make genetic changes to their own bodies to ensure their victory.

Females now lay clutches of sixteen eggs instead of the four they used to before the holy relic arrived. The males became twice as fast and twice as strong, and their aggression was increased as well as stamina.

Males and females now reached sexual maturity within three cycles instead of the twelve cycles it took before the holy relic arrived. Their population exploded, and their crusade grew ever stronger.

It was the Masters who commanded them to eat the inferiors so they could sustain themselves and their nomadic crusade instead of being planet-bound or logistically restricted for need of sustenance.

Sometimes the Masters would order them to conquer instead of slaughter, and they always obeyed.

The chief cleric finished the prayer and lifted his head to look at the holy relic. He had been chief cleric for over three cycles, and the Masters had not yet deemed him worthy of their wisdom.

“Masters, we have almost eradicated the disgusting insect fleets. One more battle, and then they will be no more. We will follow the scent and go to their worlds. We will cleanse the galaxy of them.”

He waited for a time, and they did not answer him.

“We have detected signs of our greatest foes, the Ma’Kin’Ati and the Ma’Kin’Alit. They still live, Masters. The plagues you gifted us did not kill all the Ma’kin’Ati. We need your wisdom.”

He waited for a time and was just about to depart unblessed when the Masters spoke to him for the first time. The holy relic glowed with an indescribable power, and disembodied voices came from it.

“We have deemed you worthy of our wisdom. We require confirmation of the existence of the impure ones who dare to stand against our holy warriors. You will bring us genetic samples.

Let this be a lesson in the failure of your ancestors to eradicate the foes of your masters. They allowed the Ma’Kin’Alit to defeat the Bal’Ri’Kan, and the paradise we promised you did not come.

The foes have had millennia to grow in wisdom and strength, and now the cleansing of the galaxy is in danger. Fail to cleanse them this time, and we will remove our blessings and wisdom from you.

We will depart from this galaxy and find another worthy of our paradise. You will be left without us, and you will fall from grace. You will die impure, and paradise will be denied to the Bal’Ri’Kan.”

The holy relic went dark, and the chief cleric trembled in awe and fear of the Masters who had just blessed him. Their threat to remove the paradise that was promised terrified him to his core.

He must not fail them, or they will lose their blessings and die a meaningless death like the other disgusting inferiors. The Bal’RI’Kan would become impure creatures themselves, an ignoble fate.

The chief cleric left the sanctum and returned to the main chamber. After activating the transmission systems, he leaned his head back and issued the battle cry of the Bal’Ri’Kan.

As his call spread throughout the system, all ships capable of fighting immediately activated their null space capacitors and waited for the final command.

Tens of thousands of engines came to life as the null space capacitors were fed the needed power.

They were going to the last system to destroy the remnants of the insect fleet, and then they would wait until all the ships in this system joined them after finishing repairs and returning to full combat status.

He would reform the fleets when all had come, and then they would find the scent trail that led back to the insect worlds and follow it. He lifted his head again and made the battle cry once more.

Tens of thousands of crusader ships heard the call and activated their null drives. The chief cleric felt pride surging within him as massive formations of holy crusader ships started flashing into null space. The last of the insect fleets would be no more, and their worlds were next.